


gasoline

by glutamate



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Face-Sitting, Friends With Benefits, Mutual Masturbation, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Sexual Experimentation, service top jamie taylor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-21 12:53:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30022068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glutamate/pseuds/glutamate
Summary: Dani's never had an orgasm. Jamie helps.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 82
Kudos: 412





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the HAIM song of the same name.

“To be honest,” Dani says, holding a glass of wine by the bowl and swirling it absently, “I never really understood what all the fuss was about.”

“The fuss,” Jamie repeats. She’s sitting in Dani’s desk chair with a bottle of beer — one of the IPAs that Dani has started keeping in her fridge for her, expensive swill because she won’t just drink Miller Lite like a normal person — and swiveling herself around the room using her legs. 

“When it comes to sex, I mean. Like, it’s just never been that great for me.” Dani frowns. “Is that weird?”

“No,” Jamie says. “Plenty of people feel that way, I’m sure.” 

“That’s probably true.” She takes a sip of her wine. It’s terrible. It came from a box, so she’s not sure what she was expecting, but it tastes the way Febreze smells. Sweet but in a chemical way. “But I also kinda think...it’s not like I have a big sample size, right?” 

Jamie laughs. “‘Sample size.’ Love it when you talk statistics to me.” 

“Oh, you know what I mean.” 

“So Edmund wasn’t the best in bed, then?” Jamie says. When Dani nods in response, she continues, “Could’ve guessed that from, uh, literally everything about him —” 

“Hey,” Dani says, “be nice,” although it does make her laugh. Eddie was one big five-year-long mistake. Now that it’s over, and  _ been  _ over for a few months, she’s getting closer to being able to look back on it and laugh. And, she thinks, getting closer to being able to live her life the way  _ she _ wants to. 

She doesn’t think she’s quite there yet, though. She hasn’t been on any dates since breaking up with him, although she has made a half-hearted attempt at Tinder and Bumble, and at going to bars and letting men buy her drinks. No one has really caught her eye, though; no one, across the apps and bars, has made her  _ feel  _ anything discernible. Not that she’s actually let anything go very far. The closest she got was a guy she met on the dance floor at Park Street, a small skinny boy in a band shirt. He had long hair, and she’d liked the way it fell over her hands when she kissed him, but nothing else really clicked. 

She’s sort of beginning to think she just doesn’t work that way. Sometimes, secretly, she entertains the thought that maybe she should have settled for what she had with Eddie. At least he was nice. 

“Do you  _ want _ a bigger...what did you call it? A bigger sample size?” Jamie says. 

Dani considers it. “I don’t know. I’d kind of just like to know if I’m broken or not.” 

“Jesus, don’t — you aren’t broken just because you didn’t like fucking that human broccoli stalk.” 

“I didn’t mean it like  _ that,”  _ Dani says. “But just, you know, maybe my body just isn’t, like, built for it. I mean, I’ve never even had an orgasm.” 

She probably wouldn’t be admitting this if she wasn’t tipsy. Even as the words leave her mouth she can feel the tips of her ears getting hot. She touches one cheek and feels the way it’s burning already, and presses the wine glass to her face to cool it down. 

“What?” Jamie says. Then, hastily, she adds, “I mean, no judgment. But — never? Even by yourself?” 

It’s funny how Dani really does never feel judged by Jamie. For someone who’s so outwardly caustic, she’s so open when it comes to Dani, so willing to listen. When Dani first met her a year ago, there had been a brief period when she was intimidated by Jamie, and had assumed based on her whole aura (air of cool indifference, staunch refusal to introduce herself to Dani) that she wouldn’t want anything to do with her. This impression had only lasted briefly, though; she’d been disabused of it only a couple days into her job at Bly, when Jamie walked in on her mid-panic attack and somehow managed to talk her down without ever falling into syrupy platitudes or false reassurances, the way other people sometimes did. It’s been the foundation of their friendship: she has a way of seeing right through all of the various facades that Dani juggles and getting to the truth of her without ever making it seem like she’s prying, or trying to look at anything Dani would rather hide. 

“I don’t really...do that,” Dani says. 

Jamie takes a long sip of her beer. She probably isn’t buzzed enough to be having this conversation. The beer is only 6% alcohol. “You don’t, like — touch yourself?” 

“No.” 

She’s tried in the past, although it’s been a while. It always seemed like more of an effort than it was worth, trying to conjure up the right images while keeping out the wrong ones and paying attention to what felt good, which was very little. All that just to end up sweaty and frustrated, with an aching wrist. 

“Maybe you could start,” Jamie says. “Just to try. If you want.” 

“I wouldn’t even know what to do, honestly. I mean, what do you —” 

She stops herself. She’d been about to say  _ what do  _ you _ do,  _ which — their friendship doesn’t have many boundaries, but  _ that  _ would definitely cross one of them. 

But she’s already thought it, and now, naturally, she’s thinking about what Jamie  _ would  _ do, or what she would look like, under her sheets with one hand working at herself under her shorts, breathing hard. Sometimes when Jamie is doing something that requires physical exertion she gets this little crease between her eyebrows where they pull together — last month she’d helped Dani move into her new apartment, carried all the heavy stuff up the stairs for her, and Dani still remembers the look of concentration she’d worn when picking up those boxes, the groan of effort, muscles standing taut in her arms, and — she doesn’t know why she still remembers it so clearly, but it’s the image that springs into her head when she...well, when she considers what Jamie might look like. Doing that. 

Jamie raises one eyebrow. “What do I what?” 

“Well,” Dani says. Her voice comes out sounding a little higher than usual. “Well, you’ve, y’know, been with women.” 

“Good observation.” 

“So, I guess, what — what do girls normally like? Or how do you...figure it out?” 

Jamie shrugs. “Dunno. I just wing it. Usually goes fine.” 

“That’s really helpful, thanks,” Dani says, and Jamie rolls her eyes at her. “But what about...there’s nothing that works universally, you don’t think? I’m guessing you’re — I don’t know, pretty good when it comes to this stuff, so —” 

“Don’t know why you’ve assumed I have all this sexual prowess,” Jamie says, “but thanks.” 

“Am I  _ wrong,  _ though?” 

“No.” Jamie smiles out of one corner of her mouth. “So...I mean, it’s different for everyone. What works and what doesn’t. You just gotta try shit and, like, observe. There wasn’t  _ anything  _ that felt good for you, with Eddie? At all?” 

Dani chews on her bottom lip and tries to think back to it. Eddie had never exactly done anything  _ wrong,  _ had he? It was always mostly the same, though: he would start by going down on her, which she supposes did feel good for a few minutes, but he’d always go at it way too aggressively and for way too long, until she pretended to come so that he’d stop without her having to tell him to. 

She tells Jamie all of this, spurred by the wine, finishing by saying, “I don’t know  _ who _ made him think that slobbering all over my — all over me — was a good thing, but whoever it was should be sued.”

Jamie snorts. “Well, now he thinks he was doing it right, so.”

“Oh my God,” Dani says. “Oh, no. Now I’ve inflicted that on all the other women he dates.” 

“We can only pray that someone, somewhere along the line, will tell him.” Jamie sets her beer bottle down on Dani’s desk and begins picking at the corners of its label. “So...no, then? That wasn’t something that worked for you?” 

“I feel like maybe with the right person it would. But...it’s just so hard to tell, when there hasn’t been anyone else.” She frowns. “Do you think I should, like, find someone random just to hook up with, or —?” 

“Mmm. Think that’d be too much pressure, wouldn’t it?” 

She tries to picture herself underneath a faceless stranger, feeling comfortable enough to focus on her own body. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“You want my advice,” Jamie says, studiously avoiding Dani’s gaze while she fidgets with her beer bottle, “I do think you should give it a go yourself first. But, like...don’t think of it as a race to the finish. S’not a zero-sum game where you lose if you don’t come.” 

The bluntness of her language makes Dani’s blush worsen. There’s that good old Midwestern Protestant modesty rearing its head, she thinks. “Well, what’s the point, then, if it doesn’t — if I don’t — come?” 

“Just getting to know yourself,” Jamie says. She’s back to spinning herself idly in the chair. “Your body, what you like, what feels good.”

“Hm,” Dani says. 

* * *

Later that night, after Jamie leaves, she does try. She gives it her most valiant effort. Still wine-buzzed and warm, she reclines on her bed, leaning against a few propped-up pillows, and tries to relax. For some reason it feels obscene to do this out in the open, even though all the blinds are closed, so she pulls the comforter up over her legs. 

It occurs to her that she doesn’t have a concrete idea of what to think about. Does everyone else just  _ know,  _ instinctively, what turns them on? If so, how? She takes out her phone and opens an incognito window, navigates to Pornhub, feeling, the whole time, like she’s doing something thoroughly immoral. Immediately she regrets this; the video she selects (randomly, from the homepage) features a man with an almost comically large dick jackhammering hard and fast into a woman who can’t  _ possibly  _ be enjoying that, although her exaggerated moaning says otherwise, Dani supposes. 

She closes out of the tab and puts her phone away. Deep breaths. She turns the lights off and lays back.

She thinks back to what Jamie had said —  _ just getting to know yourself. Your body. What you like. —  _ and, in the process, thinks about  _ how  _ Jamie had sounded when she said it. The rasp of her voice. That thing she kept doing absently with the beer bottle — her forefinger and thumb around the neck of it, moving up and down slowly, almost stroking it. Dani doesn’t think Jamie had even realized she was doing it, but  _ Dani _ had. And now she’s thinking about it, Jamie’s long fingers around the neck of that bottle. At first she thinks about it without really intending to, and then something shifts and she thinks about it  _ actively.  _ Jamie’s fingers and also Jamie’s mouth when she was drinking the beer, Jamie’s  _ mouth _ wrapped around the lip of the bottle, the column of her throat bobbing when she swallowed. 

Dani thinks about it, and she thinks about it some more, and she’s pretty sure she can feel herself getting wet. 

The elastic waistband of her shorts stretches taut around her wrist as she slides her hand underneath, past the thatch of curls there, until she’s — oh, fuck — teasing a finger against her clit, but that, she thinks, that is  _ way  _ too much, too soon, it makes her hips jolt slightly with how strong that particular sensation is, and not strong in a good way, either. Lower, then, down where she’s slick already, somehow, and it actually does feel sort of good, dragging two fingers through her own wetness and then bringing them up to circle gently around herself.

She’s gotten this far before, though. The blandly good feeling. Frankly, even Eddie’s fingers on her were able to get her to this point. It’s pure anatomy. The challenge is in the  _ build,  _ in keeping this going until she can crest over some elusive peak. The problem always arises when she starts thinking, sometimes about grocery lists and lesson plans out of boredom, but sometimes — like right now — about things that she absolutely should not be thinking about, things like those fingers and that mouth and the things Jamie has done to other women using those fingers and that mouth, and the things she could do to  _ Dani,  _ if — 

If. It’s that thought that brings her skidding to a halt. Recalibrate, she thinks, Jamie is a friend, Jamie is not mental masturbation fodder, Jamie is a very hot friend with strong hands and arms made of wiry muscle and a crooked smile that would look good from this vantage point, if Dani were laying on her back the way she is now and looking up at Jamie. In this image, Jamie is wearing that crooked smile and leaning over Dani, using those hands to pin both of Dani’s wrists high above her, which — actually Dani didn’t think she cared much for being restrained until this moment, but it works — and she’s holding Dani down with her body and pumping two fingers in and out of her, which, whoa. It’s not like Dani likes penetration. In fact she hasn’t had anything inside of her at all since breaking up with Eddie, so she doesn’t even know if she would  _ like  _ it, physically, the feeling of Jamie’s fingers fucking in and out of her, but it’s — it seems to be less about what it would feel like and more about the  _ idea,  _ the thought of Jamie  _ inside  _ her, and — 

Ah. She opens her eyes, and thinks,  _ Shit. _

* * *

Later, she texts Jamie.

**Dani:** _ Just gave it an attempt.  _

**Jamie:** _ anything?? _

**Dani:** _ No >:( I spent like a ridiculously long time on it too! Nothing! _

**Jamie:** _ ah man. maybe you need to get a vibrator or something _

**Dani:** _That sounds kinda intimidating, I don’t even know what I’d do with one_ _  
_**Dani:** _Ughhhh I got pretty close too I think. But now I just feel like I’m holding in a sneeze. So frustrating_

**Jamie:** _ haha yea that checks out.  _ _  
_ **Jamie:** _ honestly could be that you’re just putting too much pressure on yourself _ _  
_ **Jamie:** _ like it’s not something that needs to be solved you know _

**Dani:** _ But I want it to be solved!! Hahah _

**Jamie:** _ look you’ve gotta be patient with it, take your time etc _

**Dani:** _ Have you ever been with any girls that have, like. Had this problem?  _

**Jamie:** _ lol yeah it’s more common than you think _

**Dani:** _ Tell me if this is way too inappropriate of a question  _ _  
_ **Dani:** _ But ummmmm what would you like...do...or advise me to do  _ _  
_ **Dani:** _ If I were someone that you were sleeping with  _

It sounds like a fine enough text in her head, but when she actually sends it and sees it in its green bubble she finds herself wishing she could reach through the screen and pull it back. Unlike before, Jamie does not respond immediately. Dani doesn’t even have the luxury of watching for a read receipt or the typing bubbles because Jamie still refuses to replace her ancient Android with an iPhone. She clicks her phone off of silent and then puts it down, paces the length of her kitchen for what feels like an interminably long time, until she hears the buzz of a new message.

**Jamie:** _ sorry i wasn’t ignoring you just thinking  _ _  
_ **Jamie:** _ wouldn’t want to give you inaccurate info lol _ _  
_ **Jamie:** _ i mean i’d prolly start by trying to get you to relax a little, but like...you’re you. bet you’re sitting there right now with at least one fist fully clenched  _

Dani unclenches her fist.

**Dani:** _ Not anymore I’m not!  _

**Jamie:** _ you’re so predictable _ _  
_ **Jamie:** _ alright so what were you doing  _ _  
_ **Jamie:** _ that wasn’t working  _

The thought of describing, to Jamie, exactly what she was doing makes her want to die. But then — Jamie  _ asked,  _ so. 

**Dani:** _ I mean, the usual stuff? Like. Idk. Touching my clit etc _ _  
_ **Dani:** _ Wow sorry that was so blunt  _

**Jamie:** _ lol don’t apologize. but maybe you started too fast, in my experience going straight at it like that is like, unpleasantly overwhelming  _

Dani tries not to think too hard about the implications of  _ in my experience.  _ The phrase certainly does conjure up some images, though. Images of Jamie. Gaining said experience. Feeling bold, she types out — 

**Dani:** _ This would be a million times easier if you were actually here to show me _

— and then immediately regrets it more viscerally than she’s ever regretted anything in her life. She actually gasps out loud, even though there’s no one around to hear it. She thinks Jamie might not even  _ respond,  _ it’s so unbelievably inappropriate. But — within literal seconds, her phone buzzes, and —

**Jamie:** _ Jesus lol  _

**Dani:** _ Oh my God I’m so sorry. That sounded normal in my head somehow. _ _  
_ **Dani:** _ Please know I meant it in the least weird way possible _

But does she? How  _ had  _ she meant it? 

They’ve been friends for two years, and if Dani is really honest with herself — like,  _ really  _ honest — Jamie has always made her feel a little strange. Not strange in a bad way, but just...more, somehow. More aware of her own body, more present in her skin. When Jamie enters a room it’s like Dani’s entire being thrums into a fuller, more vibrant form of existence. It’s unsettling and wonderful and Dani has never given it much thought beyond the knowledge that she likes being around Jamie, likes that  _ more  _ feeling. But then, there’s the way she feels right now, and the way she’d felt last  _ night,  _ and — 

**Jamie:** _ i mean if you’re being serious  _ _  
_ **Jamie:** _ i wouldn’t mind  _

Dani stops pacing. Actually, she hadn’t even realized she was pacing until she stopped. She tries to take a breath. 

**Dani:** _ Wait what? _ _  
_ **Dani:** _ I mean, me either _ _  
_ **Dani:** _ Just to be clear. Are you, like. Offering?  _

The response comes immediately, which is good, because Dani’s heart is in her throat and her palms are sweating and she doesn’t think she has it in her to wait any longer for Jamie to text her back. 

**Jamie:** _ yes _

* * *

The next day, at their regular lunchtime meeting — a tradition that started after Dani got hired at a school right across from Jamie’s flower shop — they discuss it. Dani asks a steady stream of vague questions,  _ isn’t this weird?  _ and  _ are you sure you want to?  _ and  _ what if I don’t like it?  _ Jamie fields all her questions with the patience of someone who’s been dealing with Dani for a year —  _ no  _ and  _ yes  _ and  _ that would be fine.  _

Jamie comes over that night. She texts Dani  _ here _ and then knocks, and Dani opens the door to find her standing there in ripped black jeans, a faded band t-shirt tucked into them, one hand in her back pocket, the other carrying a case of beer. Her hair is perfectly tousled. She looks too casual and calm for what they’re about to do. Or...Dani doesn’t exactly know what they’re about to do, actually. Is Jamie here to...show her how to get off? Talk her through it? Fuck her? 

“Gonna invite me in, or…?” Jamie says. 

“Oh! Yeah, yeah, sorry. Come — come on in.” 

She feels underdressed. She’s wearing a loose blouse and a skirt, which is what she’d worn to work that morning, but she’d had on stockings underneath the skirt. After she got home she took off the stockings, and she kind of wishes that Jamie would look at her bare legs, now, but Jamie doesn’t. Jamie just saunters into her apartment and keeps her eyes well away from Dani’s legs. 

“Um,” Dani says, intelligently. “So...should we…go...to my room…?” 

Jamie laughs. “Buy me dinner first, Christ,” and weirdly enough it takes all the bad tension out of the room, leaves Dani with only the good tension, the kind that makes her want to take Jamie into her room and touch herself while Jamie tells her what to do. 

Once they’re both sprawled out on her bed, far enough away from each other to have plausible deniability, Dani says, “I think it actually might be worse to have...tried and gotten close than to not have tried at all.” 

“Really?” Jamie frowns. “Didn’t feel good at all, just to do it?” 

“I mean…” Dani says.  _ It did, but then I started picturing you holding me down and fucking me, and I had to stop.  _ “Sort of, but now I just feel like...a rubber band.” 

“Yeah, that’s the worst. Although — sometimes it makes it better. Holding it off like that. When you eventually  _ do  _ let yourself get there, it’s, like, much better for it.” 

“Is that what you do?” Dani says. “Sorry. Weird. Weird question.” 

“Not weird,” Jamie says. She’s got that little half-smirk on again, the one that makes it clear that she’s teasing. 

Dani casts around the room, pushes her hair back out of her face. Before Jamie got here she had a single glass of wine, not enough to affect her judgment or decision-making whatsoever, but definitely enough to leave her feeling flushed and warm. Flushed and warm and touchable. “So. Um. What do we...how do you wanna, like...start?”

Jamie looks at her for a long, tantalizing moment. Something between them, impossible for Dani to name but perceptible all the same, seems to shift into place (or maybe out of place, Dani isn’t sure). Their friendship has long since been  _ charged,  _ at least from Dani’s perspective, but this — this is something different. 

“Show me,” Jamie says quietly, “what you were doing yesterday. How you started.”

“Well, I was — I was under the covers.” 

“Get under the covers, then,” Jamie says, and Dani listens, pulling the top sheet over her legs so that she’s covered up to her chest. It feels oddly good to listen, as tame of a request as it is. Jamie moves so that she’s leaning against the headboard next to Dani. “Wait, why were you under the covers? There’s no one here to see.” 

“Just felt less embarrassing that way, I don’t know.” She sits up slightly, so that she can look Jamie in the eye and make it clear that she’s mostly kidding when she says, “I was raised in small-town America, okay, I have a lot of ingrained sexual shame.” 

“Well, alright. Whatever makes you comfortable.” 

“Weirdly, having you here feels somehow less like I’m going to offend God by doing this.” 

“That’s definitely not accurate,” Jamie says, chuckling. “In terms of things that might offend God. Speaking of which. You were going to show me how you started?” 

Her current angle affords her an excellent view of Jamie’s side profile, and the sharp cut of her jaw, the delicate point of her nose. The sleeves of her shirt are rolled up high, so that Dani can see most of her arms. Dani bites her lip and closes her eyes, snakes one hand underneath the waistband of her skirt, the way she had — 

“Hang on, hang on,” Jamie says. Dani opens her eyes. Jamie’s lying on her side now, her head propped on one one hand. “Easy. Take it slower.”

Something about the gravelly edge to Jamie’s voice when she says this,  _ easy, take it slower,  _ makes Dani want to feel skin against her own, all over her. “This is stupid,” Dani says, “I’m not gonna be able to get out of my own head. That’s what happened last night.” 

Jamie regards her thoughtfully, and then says, “Can I try something?” 

“I — sure.” 

“You trust me?” 

Dani nods without having to think about it, and then Jamie leans over, takes Dani’s chin in one hand, and kisses her. At first it’s soft and doesn’t inspire any feelings in Dani’s body besides some sort of sweet, syrupy joy, which is nice but has nothing to do with sex. Then Jamie opens her mouth and lets her tongue brush, just briefly, against Dani’s. She tastes like beer and chewing gum and it shouldn’t be hot, objectively, but it is because it’s  _ Jamie  _ and Dani wants every part of herself to become as intimately acquainted with every part of Jamie as she is, now, with the taste of her tongue.

“Oh,” Dani says into her mouth. Jamie chuckles. 

“Not okay?” 

“No,” Dani says. “No, as in, no, not not okay.” 

Jamie pulls away to look Dani in the eye. When she leans back in, Dani closes her eyes, expecting another kiss, but instead Jamie aims lower, kisses her jaw instead. Then the spot behind her ear, which is nice; then her earlobe, sucking it lightly into her mouth with a gentle scrape of teeth, which is nicer, and Dani can’t help but let a gasp escape her. 

“I figure,” Jamie says, kissing her neck now, “that you might be the type of person that needs someone else to focus on, too. So that you’re not so in your head about it.” 

“Definitely,” Dani breathes. “You sure this isn’t weird?” 

“I’m sure if you’re sure.” Jamie’s breath ghosts over the hollow at the base of Dani’s neck, where her collarbones meet. She’s paused her kissing, and Dani realizes she’s waiting for a response.

“Yeah. I’m sure.” 

Latent and confusing attraction aside, she trusts Jamie. That isn’t all she’ll need — she knows this already because she trusted Eddie too, and he was as kind and respectful as any man could be, always asking things like  _ Is this okay?,  _ except with him all the questions only had the effect of annoying her, like,  _ stop asking me if I’m enjoying this, because I’m not, just fuck me and get it over with already  _ — but it helps.

Jamie untucks Dani’s blouse from her skirt, lets her hand drift underneath to the bare skin of her stomach. “Should I take my shirt off?” Dani says. 

“Let me,” Jamie says, sliding each button out of its hole, letting her knuckles graze Dani’s skin as she goes. She’s got a decidedly unfancy bra on, a beige one that does nothing to flatter her breasts, and she wonders briefly if she should have changed. Jamie is a friend, she reminds herself. She doesn’t actually care what sort of bra Dani has on. 

Once Jamie has her shirt fully unbuttoned, Dani waits for her to slide it over her shoulders and fully off, but she doesn’t, instead leaving it on and open. Dani can feel her heart pounding hard in her chest, can see the sharp, rapid way her own sternum rises and falls with her breathing. Jamie notices too. 

“You alright?” she says. Dani nods sheepishly. “Don’t be nervous. Easier said than done, I know, but — it’s just me.” 

_ It’s not  _ just  _ you,  _ she wants to say, but then Jamie reaches her hand around to Dani’s back and unclasps her bra. (Also something Eddie always struggled with even after years of experience.  _ It’s hard when there’s three clasps,  _ he said once.) Jamie brings her hand back around, doesn’t fully take off her bra but pulls it down so that both of her breasts are exposed, and Dani wants to say something to acknowledge the oddness of the situation but then Jamie leans up and kisses her. Harder this time, more demanding. Jamie kisses her like she’s wanted to do this for years, although Dani knows that’s likely just wishful thinking on her part. Jamie kisses messily without being sloppy, languid without being boring, insistent without being aggressive. Dani’s so caught up in the kiss that she doesn’t even notice where Jamie’s hand is going until she feels Jamie cup her breast, running a thumb over her nipple. 

She moans into Jamie’s mouth. “Oh, that’s —” 

“Feel good?” Jamie asks. Her touch grows more intentional, firmer, a little pinch, a slight tug. Dani moans again, which turns into a whine when Jamie removes her hand.

“Why’d you stop,” she says. Jamie takes her hand, lying limp by her side, and places it on Dani’s own breast. 

“That’s something,” Jamie says, “you like. Something for you to try on yourself.” 

She tries it. Cups herself with one hand, takes her nipple between her thumb and forefinger the way Jamie had. “Like this?” she says, in a high voice that she barely recognizes from herself. Obviously she doesn’t actually need Jamie to tell her if she’s doing it right. It’s her own body; she knows she’s doing it right. But some part of her wants Jamie’s approval. 

“Yeah,” Jamie says. Her voice sounds different, like she has something stuck in her throat. “Like that.” She kisses her again, then, sucking Dani’s lower lip into her mouth briefly, and Dani brings her free hand up to her other breast too. It feels dirty, obscene, to be making out with Jamie while doing this to herself, but that thought only makes it feel better, and there’s a pressure building between her legs now, heat pooling low, but it’s still not enough. 

Dani pulls away to say, “This is — it’s good, but it — doesn’t feel as good as when you did it.” 

Jamie raises her eyebrows. “Thought the whole goal of this was for you to get  _ yourself _ off.” 

“The goal is to come,” she says, surprising even herself with her bluntness. “Please, can you just —” 

“Okay,” Jamie says. 

She replaces Dani’s hands with her own and it’s immediately so much better, her touch so much more confident, the way she palms Dani’s breasts and kisses her with her open mouth like she actually  _ wants  _ her, wants to be touching her like this. Dani can’t help gasping and arching further into her. Previously she’d settled for going through the motions and making all the requisite sounds to convince Eddie she enjoyed sex, but she’s never heard herself sound like  _ this,  _ she’s never heard these breathy little sighs that keep spilling from her mouth. This is a whole new part of herself that Jamie’s unlocking. 

“Hang on,” Jamie mutters, breaking the kiss. Dani whines again, and Jamie laughs. “Christ, you’re impatient.” 

“You keep stopping right when I’m —” She cuts herself off, because Jamie has bent her head lower, to Dani’s chest, and when she runs her tongue over a nipple Dani says, “Oh, Jesus.” 

“You like that?” Jamie says, her voice low and rough. 

“Y — yeah, that’s — oh my  _ God,  _ Jamie.” She tangles her fingers in Jamie’s hair and, almost without meaning to, pulls her head in tighter. Jamie groans, the sound vibrating into Dani’s skin. “Sorry.” 

Jamie pulls her mouth off of Dani’s breast with an audible pop. The sight of her own skin shining with Jamie’s spit is inexplicably hot. “Don’t be sorry,” she says. She’s breathing hard, red flush spilling across her nose and cheekbones, and for the first time Dani considers that maybe this is doing as much for Jamie as it is for her. “If you want something, just ask. Or show me.” 

“Okay. I want — that, more of that. What you were just doing.” 

Jamie flashes her a dark smile and returns to it, and Dani  _ aches,  _ she can feel it, the sweet swell between her legs, and she thinks she might die if she has to keep just feeling the ache without being able to address it. Jamie’s thigh is between her legs; Dani reaches down and grasps the back of it, pulls it up until it’s pressing right up against her core, right where she needs it to be. 

“Can I,” she gasps, “please, I want —”, and Jamie doesn’t even pull her mouth away this time, just nods with her lips and tongue still laving at her nipple, so Dani starts grinding herself down onto Jamie’s thigh, and — “Oh, shit, fuck,  _ fuck _ —”

“The mouth on you,” Jamie says, tone light and chiding. 

Dani laughs breathlessly and slaps at Jamie’s shoulder, managing to stammer out a, “Shut up,” even as she’s rolling her hips over Jamie’s leg, and when Jamie starts thrusting up into her in time with it, pressing into her  _ just  _ right, she moans and it’s probably a little too loud, so she stuffs the knuckles of one hand into her mouth, bites down to muffle the noises she’s making. 

“Jesus, Dani, you’re driving me mad.” 

“You can, um.” It’s hard to talk. She keeps stuttering. “If you want, you can — do whatever you need to do, too.” 

“Might have to, if you keep making those fucking sounds.” She glances down to where Dani is rutting helplessly against her leg and says, “Try using your hand now.” Without questioning it, Dani slides her hand under her skirt. “Good girl,” Jamie says, which — is  _ not  _ something Dani would have predicted she’d like, but this evening is proving to be full of surprises anyway, so why not one more. 

Dani cups herself through her underwear, and even that, the faint press of her fingers over cotton, is so  _ good,  _ delicious friction that’s made even better by Jamie’s mouth still on her. She makes a tiny plaintive sound into Jamie’s shoulder. 

“God,” Jamie gasps. “Okay, yeah, I think I’ll — y’know. Join you.” 

“Yeah,” Dani says. She opens her eyes just to watch Jamie pop open the button of her jeans and slip her hand in, stilling the action of her own hand to focus on Jamie’s face, the way her eyes flutter shut, the rough edge of her voice when she moans. A thought occurs to her that she’d think twice about voicing if she wasn’t fully on fire. “I don’t know if I’m doing this right, I want — I need you to show me.” 

“Jesus fuck,” Jamie says. She takes her hand out of her jeans — briefly, Dani feels bad about taking her attention away from herself — and slides it into Dani’s skirt, letting her fingers rest right on top of Dani’s, like a shadow. Her skin is warm. With gentle pressure, more suggestions than anything else, she moves Dani’s hand underneath the waistband of her underwear. Jamie isn’t actually  _ touching  _ any other part of her, but the thought that she  _ could,  _ if Dani removed her hand, is overwhelming. 

Jamie spurs her hand further down until she can feel herself, hot and swollen and open, and she  _ wants.  _ Impelled by Jamie’s hand above hers, Dani dips the tips of her fingers into herself, gathering wetness and dragging her hand up until she’s brushing her clit, just barely, not too hard the way she had before. 

“Jamie,” she says. 

“That okay?” 

“Yeah, God, way more than okay.” 

Jamie’s moving her fingers over Dani’s now, lazy, slow circles, and it’s  _ incredible,  _ although Dani doesn’t know how much of that is due to the actual physical action of what they’re doing and how much of it is just the thought of Jamie’s fingers, so close to — so close to actually  _ touching  _ her, and if she asked, Jamie probably would, Jamie would do anything Dani asked of her. After all, she’s doing  _ this,  _ so it isn’t much of a stretch to imagine Jamie fucking her for real, is it? 

“Oh my God, oh my  _ God,  _ Jamie, you’re so — God, you’re good at this,” she says, and Jamie laughs, leaves an open-mouthed kiss on her neck, and then sucks hard enough on the spot to leave a bruise. “You — sorry, I know I kind of interrupted you, you can go back to — what you were doing.” 

“You’re the priority here,” Jamie says, although her voice sounds strained. “Or — hang on, there’s a better way to do this.” 

“Okay.” 

Jamie pulls her hand out of Dani’s skirt and then pulls off of her entirely, which makes Dani feel like a void is opening up somewhere deep inside her. Suddenly, without Jamie on top of her, she feels exposed and vulnerable. The point of this, she reminds herself, is to learn how to do it  _ alone,  _ so she definitely shouldn’t get too used to Jamie’s weight on top of her. Jamie scoots up the bed until she’s leaning against the headboard, and then beckons Dani to join her. 

“Where should I…?” Dani says.

“Come here.” Jamie stretches out her legs and pats her thighs. “Here.” 

Shakily, Dani climbs up Jamie’s lap until she’s straddling her. She has to ruck her skirt up a bit to be able to spread her legs enough to achieve this; when she lowers herself to meet the seam of Jamie’s unbuttoned jeans, she realizes belatedly that she’s definitely going to leave a fucking  _ stain  _ there. That seems like something to worry about later, though. 

Jamie puts one hand on Dani’s lower back, pulling her closer. Her shirt falls open again, allowing Jamie to dip her head and suck a nipple into her mouth, the same way she was doing before, and Dani makes that pathetic high-pitched sound at the feeling. 

“Hand under your skirt,” Jamie tells her. Dani does what she says. “Same thing you were doing before. If that’s what felt good to you.” 

“It did, it definitely did.” 

If she were feeling  _ really  _ self-indulgent, she’d ask Jamie to show her again, or to get rid of that pretense entirely and just  _ touch  _ her, but Jamie is flushed and breathing hard underneath her, and Dani isn’t cruel enough to deny her her own release. 

“There you go,” Jamie says when Dani starts grinding hard against her own fingers, with Jamie’s own hand working at herself. It turns out to be exactly what she needs, because it feels so  _ fucking  _ good, touching herself like this with Jamie so warm and soft underneath her, listening to Jamie’s own choked-off moans, muted slightly by Dani’s skin. 

There’s something building, which is new. She has no reference for what the peak is supposed to feel like but she can still tell that she’s climbing up toward it. “Jamie — I think I’m, I think I’m almost —” 

“Me too,” Jamie groans. “Already close, fuck, but I’m” — she huffs out a breathless laugh — “trying to hold off, to wait for you, but it’s getting hard.” 

“Don’t, don’t wait for me.” Then, apparently deciding in the heat of the moment to dive headlong into honesty, she says, “I wanna hear you, when you — I want — want you to come.” Her cheeks are burning. She’s a grown woman who can’t say the word  _ come _ without being vaguely embarrassed about it. 

She’s hit a rhythm now that she thinks is leading her up to that elusive peak, allowing her to climb and climb, and she reaches out to grip her headboard with one hand to keep from losing her balance as she grinds into her hand, into Jamie’s lap, all the while arching her back to push her breasts more insistently to Jamie’s mouth. It’s so good,  _ so  _ good, and she thinks she might be cresting that hill, she might — 

“Fuck,” she chokes out, her voice high and breaking, “fuck, Jamie, I think I’m gonna, I’m,” and it’s Jamie’s answering moan that pushes her over the edge of something and has her falling into orgasm, her hips stuttering into her hand, a stream of  _ oh my God oh my God Jamie oh my God  _ falling out of her mouth. Jamie mouths ineffectually at her shoulder to muffle her own noises. 

For a moment, afterward, Dani just sits there breathing hard in unison with Jamie, who lets her head fall back and hit the headboard with a thunk. Everything feels swollen and oversensitive; her body is all wrung-out, like a sponge. Jamie’s hand is still on her lower back, now scratching lazy circles over her shirt. She waits for the embarrassment to set in, but it never does. Instead she starts laughing. 

“Something funny?” Jamie says. 

“I just,” Dani starts. “What...that was...how did you  _ do  _ that?” 

“Didn’t do much, really. That was mostly you.” 

“Not really. You were — doing that thing, with my —” She gestures vaguely at her chest. 

Jamie raises her eyebrows. “Ah. Yeah. Your tits are really sensitive, huh?” 

Dani wrinkles her nose. “I hate that word.” 

“What word would you rather use?” 

She thinks, can’t come up with a better alternative, shrugs in lieu of a response. “So, um. Now what?” 

Jamie pats her thigh lightly, which Dani takes as a signal to climb off. She settles next to Jamie and leans against the headboard. “Now you, uh, have some experience getting yourself off. Right? So you can...use that knowledge how you see fit.” 

Oh. She’d meant  _ now what  _ as in,  _ was that anything more than you doing me a favor as a friend? Did that feel clinical and platonic to you, or did it feel like something you could do again? Did it feel like something you don’t want to go without now that you’ve had it?  _ But those are things she can’t voice, so she settles for smiling and tucking herself back under the covers. 

* * *

The whole week following their encounter, Dani feels nebulously different. She feels like a woman with a newfound grasp of her own body, a more complete understanding of her physicality. At lunch, they don’t talk about it in explicit terms — partly because that seems to be the unspoken term of their arrangement, partly because it would be weird to talk about a friendly session of mutual masturbation in the middle of a Five Guys — but Dani thinks she can sense a shift in their dynamic. It’s a little more charged. Jamie smiles at her when she isn’t looking, now, and pretends not to notice when Dani stares at her mouth too long when she talks. 

There’s only one problem. Dani tries a couple times to touch herself again, alone in her room with the lights turned down, and it’s — it’s good, still, definitely better than it was, but it’s not the  _ same,  _ and she’s once again unable to quite get there. After the third failed attempt, she texts Jamie. 

**Dani:** _ I think you broke me _

Jamie replies almost immediately.

**Jamie:** _ what?? _

**Dani:** _ I’m back to not being able to finish. :/ _ _  
_ **Dani:** _ And I don’t need any advice about it, per se, I already know I’m doing everything right  _

**Jamie:** _ well there’s no such thing as “right” or wrong but _ _  
_ **Jamie:** _ what do you need then?  _

**Dani:** _ I...feel like you probably know the answer to that.  _

**Jamie:** _ i have no clue  _

**Dani:** _ Jamieeeee _

**Jamie:** _ Dani  _

**Dani:** _ You know what I’m trying to ask for LOL _

She waits. Second-guesses herself a million times in the span of a few seconds.  _ That  _ was too much. It was too forward, it was weird, it was inappropriate. Jamie is never going to reply. Jamie is going to purchase an iPhone and download this conversation to it just so she can leave Dani on read. Jamie is — 

Jamie has replied. 

**Jamie:** _ need you to say it _ _  
_ **Jamie:** _ ask me _

There are so many things she wants, none of which she’s ever tried to ask for. She types fast and doesn’t proofread before she hits send on each text.

**Dani:** _ I want you to come over and touch me _ _  
_ **Dani:** _ Again _ _  
_ **Dani:** _ I think that’s what’s missing when I’m trying to get off by myself, I think I just need your hands on me  _ _  
_ **Dani:** _ Please haha I’m like so pent up already _

**Jamie:** _ alright fuck im on my way lol _

* * *

Jamie comes over. They start things off in the same slightly awkward manner as before, except now Dani knows how bad she wants this, and how good it’ll feel, so she’s a little clumsier tonight, a little more graceless with her movements. They’re in the middle of it — the position they’d settled on before, Dani in Jamie’s lap, circling herself over her underwear with languid ease, like they have all the time in the world — when something occurs to her. It’s probably an appropriate time for her to stop talking, but says it anyway. 

“Do you, um — do you ever, like, think about anything when you do this — ?” 

Jamie nods against her. 

“Like what?” 

“This.” 

“This?” She pushes under her underwear, finally, feels herself warm and slick underneath her fingers. “You think about me?”

Jamie stills, tensing slightly like she’s been caught doing something she shouldn’t. “Well, uh.” 

“Jamie.” 

“It’s — only sometimes, and it probably isn’t something I should be doing, but I — yeah. Sometimes.” 

“Tell me what you think about,” Dani says. “Like, exactly what you think about.” 

“It’s — it’s creepy, I know it is — “ 

Feeling suddenly bold, Dani grasps Jamie’s face with one hand and pulls her up to kiss her. “I don’t care, I want to hear it.” 

It’s strange seeing Jamie flustered, thrown off-kilter like this. She’s normally so collected. She walks around the world like she owns it, with that stupid cocky saunter and that perfect little half-smile that Dani hasn’t been able to stop thinking about recently. There’s something intoxicating about seeing her eyes half-lidded, lips parted, as Dani tilts her face up with a finger under her chin. 

“I think — I think about you,” Jamie says. “Think about touching you. Tasting you.”

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah.” 

“You — you want that?” 

“Jesus,” Jamie says through a laugh, “you have no idea how bad.” 

Dani makes up her mind, then. “Show me.”

“What?” Jamie says, already a little breathless from the roll of Dani’s hips against hers. 

“Show me,” Dani says, “what you think about.” 

In her head she’d meant for this to come out sounding hot, sinful, but when she says it it sounds more like a plea. Probably because now that she knows that it’s within the realm of possibility, she  _ really  _ wants it. 

Jamie rolls Dani off her lap and onto her back. Dani still has her shirt on, a worn oversized tee that she’d thrown on because it was comfortable, and Jamie pushes it up to her arms so that her chest is exposed, kisses her way down until she’s curling fingers in the waistband of Dani’s underwear, which she still hasn’t taken off. 

“You’re sure this is still alright,” Jamie says. 

“Yes,  _ yes,  _ please, just.” 

“Just what?” 

“You know.” 

Jamie laughs darkly. Dani’s beginning to think she likes embarrassing her just a little, watching her whole body flush pink as she struggles to voice what it is she wants. “Dunno if it’s totally clear. You might have to specify.” 

“Your mouth,” Dani gets out, finally. “Put — put your mouth on me.”

She realizes, when Jamie starts to pull her underwear down her legs, that she’s wetter than she’s probably ever been in her life. She can feel it, it’s dripping onto the  _ sheets,  _ for Christ’s sake. “Sorry,” she says. 

Jamie looks up. “What?” 

“I’m not usually, like — this — wet —? I don’t know why —” 

“You’re apologizing for being turned on,” Jamie says. 

“Well, when you put it that way, it sounds stupid.” She bites her lip. “You don’t mind, though, do you?” 

Jamie laughs. “You really need to start fucking better people,” she says. She takes one of Dani’s hands and places it at the back of her own head. “If I’m doing something you like, don’t be afraid to, like, keep me there. Or pull me away, if you don’t like it.” 

“Okay,” Dani says. Jamie’s hair is soft and curly under her palm. She runs her fingers through it. 

They both moan at the first stroke of Jamie’s tongue. The idea that Jamie could get anything out of this, just out of tasting Dani, is hot enough on its own without the warm wet pressure of her mouth, open and hungry against Dani. Both of Jamie’s thumbs are digging hard into Dani’s hips, hands cupping her ass to pull her closer, and she can’t help but jerk up into Jamie’s mouth. She almost apologizes, but manages to stop herself. 

“God,” she says, in a high whimper that she doesn’t even recognize from herself. Jamie’s mouth feels like it’s everywhere, her tongue and her lips velvet-soft, and she has no regard for keeping the rest of her face free of Dani’s wetness, she’s just — Dani doesn’t know how well Jamie can breathe like this, actually, her nose is sort of crushed in this position, but Jamie had told her to use her hand on her head to show her what she liked, and what she likes is  _ this.  _ She slides her hand further into Jamie’s hair and pushes down, lifts her hips slightly so that she’s grinding up into Jamie’s mouth. Jamie moans into her, sucks her clit into her mouth, and — 

“Fuck, fuck, wait a sec,” she says, and Jamie pulls away immediately, looks up at her with her mouth and her chin visibly wet, shining. The sight should probably not be as hot as it is. 

“Something wrong?” Jamie says, sounding out of breath. Dani tracks the rise and fall of her shoulders, her back, under the thin fabric of her t-shirt. 

“No, no, but I…” It’s difficult to put it into words, now that Jamie’s looking up at her like that, but she has to try. The thing is, she thinks she could probably come like this, with Jamie’s mouth alone, but she wants — something else, too. More. “Can you use, um. Your — your fingers.” Jamie nods, and Dani adds, “Wait, and — come up here, kiss me.” 

Jamie shifts up the bed until Dani can pull her in by her shirt to kiss her, rough and open-mouthed, taking the taste of herself off Jamie’s tongue, densely sweet in a sour-candy sort of way. Jamie’s hand is hovering over Dani’s hips, fingers flexing ineffectually like she’s waiting for permission. 

“D’you want,” Jamie says, “me to — how do you want me?” 

Jesus. “I don’t know,” she says, which isn’t true. 

“I’m not just gonna guess.” Even as Jamie says this, she’s already working at Dani with teasing, lazy circles, infuriatingly slow. “You have to tell me.” 

“Okay,” she says shakily, has to close her eyes because Jamie’s gaze on her is too intense, “okay, I want you in — inside me.” 

It’s not an impulse she thought she’d ever actively have. With Eddie it mostly just hurt. She braces herself, now, for at least a little bit of pain, but when Jamie sinks a finger into her it’s easy and smooth, and Dani gasps and buries her face in the crook of Jamie’s neck. 

“Good?” Jamie says. 

“Yeah.” 

She should probably be embarrassed by the noises she keeps making as Jamie moves in and out of her, hitching gasps with every thrust, but she can’t be bothered with self-consciousness when it feels so good. She grinds into the heel of Jamie’s palm and wraps both her arms around Jamie’s shoulders. 

Jamie says, in a strained voice, “More?” 

“Please,” Dani says, so Jamie adds a second finger and it’s a little more of a stretch, feels that much fuller, the sensation drawing a high shaking sound from her. She’s distantly aware of Jamie asking her if it hurts, and she shakes her head in response, says, “No, no, don’t stop.” 

She can feel it now, the beginnings of that same delicious build. It’s more intense than before, though. It’s like she’s been reduced to just a body, something composed of only skin and need and Jamie, she needs more of Jamie; she turns her head toward Jamie’s free hand that’s resting on the pillow next to her head, sucks two of Jamie’s fingers into her mouth, hears Jamie’s whispered  _ Jesus, Dani,  _ and it’s — almost too much, having Jamie inside her and all over her, and the thought is what sends her over the edge, coming hard around Jamie’s fingers.

It takes a minute for her to catch her breath enough to talk. Jamie slumps over on top of her, holding herself up on her elbows, kissing her neck gently. Dani wants to kiss her properly, but it feels somehow inappropriate to do so now that they’re no longer mid-fuck, as nonsensical as that is. When Jamie slides her fingers slowly out of her, Dani feels the lack like a physical ache inside. 

Jamie rolls off of her, finally, and lays on her back. 

“That was…” Dani manages. “Wow. Like... _ wow.  _ I mean, I — God. Thank you.” 

She can see Jamie biting back a smirk. “Anytime.” 

“Sorry, are you...I feel like I should be doing something for you, too?” 

“Ah, no, don’t worry about it.”

“Are you sure?” 

“This was about you,” Jamie says. “Seriously. It’s not a problem.” 

It feels like a turning point. Like a moment of truth. Maybe it’s the afterglow that has her feeling so bold; she swallows down her nerves and says, “Can we do this again?” 

Jamie turns to face her, amused smile giving way to something more sincere. “Sure.” 

“Like...often?” 

“As often as you like,” Jamie says. 

“Okay,” Dani says. “Um. I have one more question.” 

“Go ahead.” 

“Can I kiss you?” 

Jamie frowns, looking confused. “You think you can go again already?” 

“What — no, no, not like that.” She shifts a little closer to Jamie, watching the careful way Jamie’s eyes track her movements. “I just want to.”

“Oh,” Jamie says. “Yeah. Yeah, of course, I just — didn’t realize you — wanted that.” 

“To be honest,” Dani says, rubbing a thumb over Jamie’s cheek and leaning in, “neither did I.” 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome to gasoline 2: electric boogaloo. This chapter started to get unwieldy so I split it again - the 3rd and final part will probably be up in like a week or so. enjoy

There are a lot of new labels for Dani to have to contend with now. First and foremost, she is a Person Who Has Had an Orgasm, so that’s different. She’s also a Person Who Is Casually Fucking Her Best Friend, which seems a lot more sinful when she thinks of it that way than how it actually feels. She’s never thought of herself as someone capable of casual sex. It’s always seemed pointless to her; she’s never been able to imagine wanting someone that badly, bad enough that she’d open herself up to all of that trouble just for the sake of a body against hers. 

But with Jamie, she _does,_ and it’s sort of a revelation. All of a sudden she wants and she wants and she wants, lets it build up until she has to put it all somewhere, and if that _somewhere_ happens to be the same person she eats lunch with every day and binges reality TV with on the weekends, then so be it. 

A couple weeks following that first time, they’re laying in Dani’s bed afterward, still in their respective states of semi-undress. It’s mid-May, almost summer, and Dani’s meager window AC unit is doing nothing to combat the sweltering heat. Dani, picking idly at a stray thread on her sheet, says, “This doesn’t feel like I’m using you or anything, right?” 

From the other side of the bed — it’s too hot to cuddle, and besides, they never do that after sex anyway; it feels like it would somehow cross some invisible line — Jamie snorts. “Do _you_ feel like you’re using me?” 

“No. Well — in the strictest sense, kind of? Right?” 

“Hardly complaining about it though, am I?” Jamie waggles her eyebrows suggestively, and Dani laughs. “Consider me used.” 

Still, it doesn’t escape Dani’s notice that this new aspect of their relationship is fully controlled by her and her alone. Jamie comes over whenever she wants; Jamie gives her what she needs, and doesn’t ask anything of her. Is that bad? Is it bad that the thought of holding any sort of power of Jamie is sort of intoxicating? Maybe. But — Jamie knows what she’s doing, Dani thinks. Jamie’s probably done this before. 

It’s almost disconcerting how quickly the boundaries of this arrangement are drawn. Without ever discussing it, they seem to mutually stumble upon a set of lines: they hang out all the time, but only have sex if Dani’s specifically requested Jamie to come over for that purpose; Jamie never mentions it first; it only happens at Dani’s apartment, she never has to travel to Jamie’s for it. It takes a couple times for Dani to realize how fixed her role as the leader of this dance is. It’s a practical arrangement; it exists to serve her needs. 

But rules exist to be broken, and accordingly, it doesn’t take long for them to break theirs. 

On a Friday night, she goes over to Jamie’s apartment for drinks after work. They’re supposed to be going out with Owen and Hannah afterwards, checking out a new club that’s just opened up on High Street that apparently requires you to be on an actual list to get in (which they are, thanks to Owen’s chef friends). Pre-gaming is _so_ college, Dani knows, but drinks in this town are expensive and she’s not willing to pay ten dollars a pop just so she can get drunk enough to dance. 

“Is Rebecca coming too?” she asks, perched on one arm of Jamie’s couch while Jamie, indulging her sweet tooth while practicing the skills she’d picked up during a brief stint working as a bartender, makes her an Aperol spritz. “I mean, I like her just fine, but her boyfriend’s such a creep.” 

“Hate that fucker.” Jamie hands her her drink, the glass sweating with condensation. “If he’s there I’m gonna have to stay sober. At least sober enough to keep from decking him in the face.” 

Dani _tsks_ at her. “If you’re sober, you’re not gonna dance.” 

“That sounds like a positive to me.” There’s a hissing sound as she pops the cap off a beer. She brings it around to the couch and takes a seat across from Dani. 

“No, ‘cause the rest of us will be drunk and annoying and then you’ll just sulk at the bar all night.” 

Jamie makes an offended face. “I don’t _sulk.”_

“You frequently sulk,” Dani says. “And you brood, too.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Jamie says lightly. 

Jamie doesn’t often get dressed up, but when she does, she does it _well._ Presently she’s wearing a pair of tight grey pants, a sweater tee on top that drapes perfectly over her form, her customary silver chain. She looks — well, the first word that comes to Dani’s mind is _devourable,_ but she can’t very well say _that,_ so instead she goes with, “I like that outfit on you. Where’d you get the top?” 

“Not sure,” Jamie says, looking down at herself. “Think it might have been a gift.” 

Dani reaches forward to take a section of the shirt between her fingers, rubbing at the material. “Feels soft.” 

“It’s actually scratchy as fuck, I honestly might change.” 

“Don’t,” Dani says, too quickly. Jamie quirks an eyebrow. “It — it looks good, keep it.” 

“Alright, then. As you wish.” Her expression is entirely too smug, but Dani’s okay with it. 

“You, um, you look good, too,” she says. “Not just that shirt. The whole — all of you. Looks good.” 

“You’re really smooth, anyone ever tell you that?” 

“Nope,” Dani says. Jamie laughs. She loves making Jamie laugh; Jamie’s face has so many different facets of beauty to it, it’s like a diamond that way, but Dani thinks her favorite is the way it looks when she laughs. Jamie’s laughing and shaking her head affectionately at her and Dani, all of a sudden, wants to kiss her so badly she thinks she might die if she doesn’t, she might splinter into a million pieces right there in Jamie’s apartment. 

In order to kiss her, she’ll have to shift forward onto her knees and lean over to Jamie’s end of the couch, which will be awkward and not at all smooth and easy the way she wants it to be. She used to think that the reason she never wanted Eddie was because he was always so clumsy and overeager about the whole thing; it never felt like he was ever making any sort of effort, he just _wanted_ her all the time, made it abundantly clear how bad he wanted her, and privately she always thought that maybe if he’d bothered to hide it a little, played it cool, she wouldn’t have been so indifferent toward him. It was a cruel thought to entertain, and she’d never voiced the idea out loud, but — it had lingered. 

But now Dani’s the one who’s clumsy and overeager, the one who wants so bad she couldn’t possibly hide it if she tried. She feels a sort of kinship with Eddie in hindsight. 

If Dani tries to kiss her now it won’t be smooth or cool, and she might actually tip over and crash wholesale into Jamie. She wonders if that’s the reason Jamie chose to sit all the way at the other end of the couch, in order to prevent Dani from doing something impulsive like kissing her. 

But really, she thinks, Jamie isn’t like that — Jamie is too honest to do things like send silent signals about what she wants or doesn’t want. So Dani sits up on her knees, puts one hand on the back of the couch for balance, leans forward, and kisses her. 

“What was that for?” Jamie says when Dani pulls away. 

“For looking so good,” Dani says, and kisses her again. She nudges Jamie’s mouth open and pushes her gently backward until her shoulders hit the armrest, letting her hair curtain forward over her face. Both of them are wearing lipstick, and it’s definitely in the process of being smudged beyond repair; Dani can taste the vaguely waxy chemical smear of it across Jamie’s mouth, and when she pulls away she sees it all smeared. It looks kind of good, if only because of the knowledge that _she’s_ the one who did that to Jamie. 

“Did you fuck up my face?” Jamie says. 

Through a laugh, Dani says, “God, yeah, I’m so sorry. Like...I mean, your lipstick is everywhere, you’re gonna have to just reapply.” 

“Dammit.” Jamie licks her thumb and wipes at a spot at the corner of Dani’s lips. “Yours is too.” 

“I took a calculated risk.” 

“Was it worth it?” 

“Oh, yeah. For sure. Honestly, you look hotter this way.” 

Jamie, from her repose, regards her carefully. Her eyes track down Dani’s face, over the blush that must be spilling down her neck, the semi-low cut of her top, her skirt riding up her legs from the way she’s sitting. Truthfully she’d picked out this outfit knowing that Jamie would be looking at her. Not overtly, because Jamie is too good of a person to ever _ogle,_ as much as Dani wishes she would, but — she’d known, or hoped, that Jamie’s gaze would get caught at least momentarily on the skin exposed by her outfit.

“What time are we supposed to be there?” Jamie says. Her hand comes up to drift along Dani’s thigh, leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake. 

Dani shrugs. “It’s only eight. Probably not for a while.” 

“Mm.” 

“Why?” Idly, she traces the links of Jamie’s chain with a finger. 

“Just, uh. We’ve got some time to fill.” 

“Uh-huh.” Jamie is looking up at her like she never wants to look at anything else, like she’s a little awestruck at the sight of her, like she can’t believe her luck. Dani would like to think that that’s how Jamie actually feels, too, as unrealistic as the idea is. “Got any ideas?” 

“A few,” Jamie says. “But, uh — we don’t — we didn’t plan for this, did we?” 

“Plan for what?” 

“To do anything tonight.” 

“Oh,” Dani says. “I mean. Do we have to plan for it every time?” 

Jamie raises her eyebrows. “Suppose not. Thought that was the way you preferred it, though.” 

“No. Not...not necessarily.” 

“Noted.” 

“I don’t wanna have to send you a Google Calendar invite every time I want to get off,” she teases. Jamie laughs and rolls her eyes. “So, um. If you want to...I want to.” 

“Okay,” Jamie says quietly. She curls one hand at the back of Dani’s neck and pulls her down to kiss her. It makes something in Dani’s stomach lurch pleasantly, the way Jamie, once she’s assessed what Dani wants, takes control with such easy confidence. She’s tentative and gentle until Dani makes it clear that she wants her, and then she’s all firm touch and insistent tongue and Dani _loves_ it, being handled like she isn’t breakable. 

It still does seem a little one-sided, though. Spurred by Jamie’s hand skimming her stomach under her top, Dani puts one hand on Jamie’s chest and pushes her away long enough to say, “Jamie, can you” — stops herself because the lights in Jamie’s living room are all the way up and her curtains aren’t even drawn, and their drinks are sitting half-finished on the end-table next to their phones and the sight makes her feel weirdly exposed, but pushes past it to get out — “You can — have me however you want me, it doesn’t just have to be — what I ask for.” 

Jamie pushes her hand further up Dani’s shirt, traces her breast through the lace of her bralette. “However I want?” 

“Y — yeah,” she says. Jamie kisses her neck and Dani has to try and keep herself from grinding her hips into her. She’s already far more turned on than she has any right to be. Maybe this is what it’s like to be a teenager going through the first throes of desire, and she’s just experiencing a delayed version of it because, for whatever reason, it took her all these years to even get to this point. 

Her phone beeps from the end table. She leans over Jamie to look at the message preview. Jamie groans and says, “That can’t wait?” 

“It’s Owen,” she says, peering at the message. “He says they might be a little late getting there.” 

“Reckon it’s for the same reason as us?” Jamie says. 

“God. Probably.” 

“Works out well, then,” Jamie says. She pushes Dani’s skirt up further until the fabric is all bunched up around her hips. “Fuck, I’ve been thinking about this all fucking day.” 

She can’t help but smile. It threatens to grow into a grin too wide to be sexy; she bites her lip, hoping that will mitigate the genuine expression of glee on her face. “Really?” 

“Really.” 

“I’ve been thinking about it too,” Dani says, all in a rush, like the words will run away from her if she doesn’t get them out fast enough. While she talks, Jamie starts slipping her underwear down her legs, and Dani lifts her knees one at a time to allow her to take them all the way off. It takes some maneuvering, but it works. “Honestly, I can’t _stop_ thinking about it. Like — all the time.” This is not an exaggeration. _All the time_ means at work meetings, in traffic, in the shower, at the gym, in bed when she’s trying to fall asleep. 

With both her hands Jamie cups Dani’s thighs, eases her forward slightly. “Come up here.” 

Dani frowns down at her. “What? Up where?” 

Jamie slides down the couch and readjusts so that her head is tipped back up against the armrest, positions a pillow under her neck to lean back on. She gestures broadly at her face. 

“Um,” Dani says. 

“You said however I wanted, didn’t you?” Jamie says. Dani nods. “This is how I want you.” 

So she allows Jamie to shift her forward until her hips are positioned above Jamie’s mouth, bracing herself with one palm on the armrest, the other on the wooden end-table. Her thighs bracket Jamie’s head. Briefly she wonders what she must look like to Jamie right now; it can’t be a flattering angle for her, but Jamie is still focusing that laser-beam look of adoration up at her. Dani offers her a shaky smile. 

“Hey. We don’t actually have to do this if you prefer not to,” Jamie says, frowning. “I was just teasing.” 

“No, I don’t not want to. It just feels — different? Like, I feel weirdly...exposed, like this.” 

“Exposed in a bad way?” 

She thinks about it. “No. But...I don’t know. It seems like you can see more of me this way, I guess.” 

Jamie presses a kiss to the inside of her thigh, drawing an involuntary shiver out of her. “I want to see you,” she says. Another kiss, this time on the other thigh, and then she bites down gently at the skin there. “All of you. Or — however much you want me to.” 

How much _does_ she want Jamie to see of her? How much could she bear to show? It seems like a huge, terrifying question, one that she isn’t equipped to answer in her current state. Instead of thinking about it any further she takes a breath, closes her eyes, and lowers herself slowly, gently, onto Jamie’s mouth. 

“God,” she breathes. She’ll never get used to the sensation of that first touch. At some point it has to get less heady, less impossibly good as she becomes more desensitized to it, but that hasn’t happened yet. 

Jamie grips her hips hard with both hands, cups her ass through her skirt, pulling her further down, and there’s such palpable hunger behind the gesture that just the feeling of it, Jamie grabbing gracelessly at her like she can’t get close enough, draws a moan out of her. For a moment she has to pause and take it in, catch her breath, and then she gives an experimental roll of her hips over Jamie’s tongue, letting the flat of it drag along her. 

Being in control like this is new. It’s nearly overwhelming, getting to decide and seek out what feels good to her so explicitly. She takes one of Jamie’s hands and slides it up her own shirt, tangles her fingers in Jamie’s hair. When Jamie’s other hand disappears from her hip, she almost complains, but then she hears the sound of a zipper and Jamie breathing out a rough groan into her; she glances back briefly to see Jamie sink her hand into her pants, the movement of her wrist, the slightest, most tantalizing hint of what she’s doing. Dani’s noticed that she can never last long once Jamie starts touching herself, no matter what else is going on in strictly physical terms.

“Jesus Christ,” Dani gasps, “Jamie, you’re so — you — “ 

The closer Dani gets, the harder it is to keep her balance; she pitches forward slightly, has to splay both her hands out on the table to stop from falling any further. She hits something with her hand and sends it clattering to the floor, although her eyes are closed so she can’t see what it is. She lingers on the brink of finishing for what feels like forever, and it’s only when Jamie brings a hand back to her hip, anchoring her in place, that she finally comes, with her back arched and legs tight around Jamie’s head and a steady litany of _fuck, fuck, fuck._

Gradually she comes back to herself, the static clearing from her mind as she breathes hard, opens her eyes. The thing she knocked over, it turns out, was Jamie’s beer, the glass bottle still intact although the beer has spilled everywhere. It’s still fizzing audibly on the floor. 

“That was…” she starts. Jamie, from below her, makes a sound of assent. Dani climbs shakily off of her and shuffles down until she’s lying halfway on top of her. “I didn’t get anything on your shirt, did I?”

“No,” Jamie says, plucking at her collar. It’s mercifully dry, somehow.

“I wasn’t, like — too aggressive, right?” 

_“No._ God, no. Not at all.”

“I feel like I was about to suffocate you by the end.”

“Would’ve died doing what I loved, if you had.” She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “Was it alright? For you?”

Dani fixes her with an exasperated look. “You know it was.” 

“Well, I like hearing you say it anyway.” Jamie smiles and raises her arm so that Dani can slide under it. “Telling me how good I am —”

“Okay, no, the last thing you need is for me to stroke your ego,” Dani says. 

“Can think of something else I’d like you to —” 

_“Don’t,”_ Dani says, laughing and shoving Jamie’s shoulder lightly. “Do _not_ finish that sentence.” 

“Sorry.” 

She lets her face rest against Jamie’s neck, feels her throat move when she swallows. “What about you? Did you, um, did you already…” she says, trailing off. At some point she’s going to have to get used to putting these things into more explicit terms; she doesn’t know why, but it embarrasses her more to talk about what they’re doing than it does to actually do it. Jamie nods. “That was fast.” 

“Yeah,” Jamie says. “Never takes much. With you, I mean.”

“Oh?” 

“Watching you, it’s, uh, it’s pretty...pretty hot, to be honest.” 

Her face feels suddenly warm. “You think I’m hot?” 

Jamie gives her an incredulous look. “Don’t sound so surprised about it. How many times have I gone to your place this week just to fuck you?” 

“Well…” 

“I don’t do that out of the goodness of my heart, you know.” 

Dani opens her mouth to say something but rethinks it midway through and just laughs instead, because what she had been about to say — something along the lines of _I thought you were just having sex with me as a friend!,_ probably — would’ve been maybe one of the most ridiculous sentences ever uttered, if she allowed herself to voice it. This knowledge really does seem new and revelatory to her, though. She really needs to sit with it for a little while to get used to it, to the idea that Jamie could ever think of her as _hot._

“Well,” Dani says, “next time, I could — will you —” She hates the way her voice sounds, all high and tremulous like she’s unsure about what she wants, which she isn’t. She changes tack, dispenses with the questions in favor of saying, “I want to watch.” 

“Watch…?” 

“You,” she says. “You always just — take care of yourself while I’m — you know, distracted. But next time, I...I wanna see you. Like. The whole time.” For a moment Jamie just blinks at her. “Sorry, is that...weird…?” 

“No, God, no,” Jamie says. “You just keep surprising me, is all.” 

“Good surprises or bad surprises?” 

“Good, definitely good.”

They clean up the spilled beer and go to fix their makeup in the bathroom, shoulders bumping in their attempt to share the narrow sink. Dani has to clean the lipstick off from between her legs, which — seeing it on her skin, mottled red plus a couple stray darker spots from hickeys that Jamie’s left, gets her wet all over again, and it seems almost laughable that she could have it in her to want Jamie again so _soon,_ but — she does, so.

“We have time,” she pants against Jamie’s open, now lipstick-free mouth. “It won’t take long.” 

“Fucking hell,” Jamie says, already helping Dani up so she can sit on the countertop, in the process knocking a hand-soap dispenser into the sink, which she picks up and places a safe distance away. If they keep this up she’s going to develop a Pavlovian response to the sound of household objects falling over. “You’re insatiable.” 

“It’s your fault.”

Jamie laughs and kisses her, agonizingly slow, like they have all the damn time in the world, holding Dani’s jaw in place with one hand and teasing her over the cotton of her underwear with the other. 

“Oh my _God,_ please,” Dani says when she’s had enough and doesn’t think it’d be physically possible for her to be any more ready. 

“Please what?” 

“You _know,”_ she says helplessly. “You’re really gonna make me ask?” But Jamie’s got that stupid cocky little half-smile on her face, and Dani’s too worked-up already for embarrassment, so she stammers out, “Fine, fuck me, _fuck_ me, just — ” 

“Didn’t say please that time,” Jamie mutters, already sinking two fingers into her. 

Between Jamie’s mouth and her fingers, Dani can’t say she has a _preference —_ either is good, both is _much_ better — but there’s something about being able to kiss Jamie while she’s inside her, being filled and fucked and watching the look in Jamie’s eyes from up close as she does it, moaning into her mouth every time she hits a particularly sensitive spot. Jamie’s already learned all the right places to touch her, all these workings of her body that have remained a secret even to Dani this whole time. She wonders if that has more to do with Jamie being a woman or if it’s just Jamie’s tendency toward keen perceptiveness at play. 

“You’re fucking perfect,” Jamie says abruptly, pressing her forehead to Dani’s, “you know that?” 

“No, tell me,” Dani whispers. 

“You’re so beautiful,” she says, fucking her with a roughness that belies the oddly tender lilt to her words, _“so_ beautiful, you might be the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met, you’re —” 

Dani makes a sound that’s half-incredulous laugh, half-gasp, saying, _“Jamie,”_ because that can’t be true, except Jamie isn’t looking at her the way she does when she’s teasing or being a flirt; instead she has a determined set to her jaw, a look of concentration about her, and — as corny and saccharine as it is, the thought that Jamie could maybe _mean_ it is ultimately what sends Dani tripping into orgasm, shuddering around Jamie’s fingers with her mouth pressed open against Jamie’s lips in a messy attempt at a kiss. 

She was, at least, right about it not taking very long. 

By the time everyone convenes at the club, it’s well past ten, and the place is unpleasantly crowded. Still, Dani convinces Jamie to dance with her (“dance”, here, meaning “sway a centimeter to each side while holding a sweating plastic cup of water”), and they do have a decent time before Rebecca’s terrible boyfriend gets them kicked out by starting a fight with the bouncer. There’s something that feels so deliciously forbidden about being around other people with Jamie, so soon after all the sex they just had. It doesn’t seem illicit or wrong, really, but it’s definitely private. Sacred. For the two of them alone to have, to share between themselves when they make eye contact from across the dance floor. 

* * *

After that night, something additional seems to shift into place — or out of place, as it were — between them. Where before it was about getting to have the physical release, an arrangement that was just an extension of their friendship, now there’s an obvious thread of genuine desire throughout their interactions. Or maybe it was always there, and Dani’s just more aware of it now. They’ve broken through the boundary that previously meant they’d only do this when Dani asked Jamie to come over; Dani doesn’t know what the new rules are, if the rules even exist anymore. She only knows the dizzying rush she gets when she sees Jamie, or thinks of her, or gets herself off in the shower at night with the memory of Jamie’s hands still hot on her body.

It’s no longer within her control, and she thinks she might like it. She likes the fact that one afternoon after their usual lunch together, Jamie presses her urgently into the backseat of her car, saying “How much longer do you have?”

Dani checks her watch. “Probably fifteen minutes?” 

“D’you think that’s enough time to —”

“Yes,” Dani says, without hesitating. 

Her car is small and the backseat is so cramped and narrow that she doesn’t know how they’re going to do this; she’s parked on the fifth floor of a dingy parking garage, and anyone could see; she can’t bring herself to care. Jamie tells Dani to sit down, pushes the handle to slide the seat as far back as it will go, kneels in front of her and lifts both her legs up onto her shoulders.

“This can’t be comfortable for you,” she says. Jamie’s back is pressed up against the front seat and it’s been ages since Dani last cleaned the mats in her car, Jamie’s knees are going to get so dirty like this, but — 

“Don’t care,” Jamie breathes, and eats her out right there in her car, amidst the stray fallen leaves on the mats and old Chinese menus tucked into the seat pockets. Another time, Jamie spends the night inadvertently, falls asleep on the couch while they’re watching a movie. She gets up the next morning at the same time Dani does, fucks her over the kitchen counter while Dani’s coffee brews; she doesn’t even bother taking off her work skirt first, just shoves it up to her hips and bends her down until her elbows are rubbing against the granite, her hips pressing hard into the lip of the countertop. Afterwards she drives to work in a daze, thinks about it all day. 

It’s like they’re skidding into something that would be dangerous if it didn’t feel so damn good. It feels as if she's living inside a dream, like she's cramming what should have been years of gradually discovering herself into these brief frenetic encounters. And it keeps happening like this. It starts to feel inevitable, magnetic, and Dani _likes_ it.

* * *

At an early work meeting one Monday, she texts Jamie, holding her phone under a desk to hide it. 

**Dani:** _I think I’m discovering new frontiers in the human capability for boredom right now_

**Jamie:** _fuck lol you are so dramatic_

**Dani:** _I’m being serious!!_ _  
_ **Dani:** _What are you doing right now_

**Jamie:** _working_ _  
_ **Jamie:** _very diligently, unlike you_

**Dani:** _Clearly not that diligently if you have time to text me on the side :)_

**Jamie:** _oh come on not fair_ _  
_ **Jamie:** _i’ll always have time for you_

Sometimes Dani wonders if Jamie realizes the effect she has on her with all these absurdly sweet things she’s always saying. She can’t imagine what it must be like to actually date Jamie and to be the recipient of full-bodied romance from her. 

**Dani:** _I miss you_

**Jamie:** _how is that possible_ **  
** **Jamie:** _you just saw me yesterday_

**Dani:** _Are you saying you don’t miss me too??_

**Jamie:** _no but that’s different_

**Dani:** _How?_

**Jamie:** _you’re you_

**Dani:** _Okay good point_ _  
_ **Dani:** _I am famously very missable_

**Jamie:** _yeah i fuckin know_

She tries to put her phone away and focus on her boss’s droning monotone, but by texting Jamie she’s set herself down a dangerous spiral. It’s like the very reminder that Jamie is a person out there living her life is enough to send Dani buzzing out of her skin with want. Is this just...how everybody else has lived their lives, feeling this way about someone or another all the time? It can’t be. No one would ever get anything done. 

She checks her lock screen once more for good measure. No new messages from Jamie. The meeting is still in full swing. 

**Dani:** _Send me a picture?_

It takes a few minutes, but Jamie responds with a terribly-angled selfie, the lighting nearly washing out her face, of herself wearing a deadpan expression and hoisting a small potted plant. 

**Dani:** _You look good! But I didn’t mean that kind of picture. :)_ _  
_ **Dani:** _;) *_

Then she locks her phone and puts it face-down on her desk. “Miss Clayton,” her boss says, following it up with a question about her thoughts on how the new curriculum development initiatives for her grade levels are going. She answers, talks at length about what she thinks — which is actually a lot, she _does_ love her job, no matter how antsy she is at this meeting — and then immediately checks her texts as soon as he starts addressing them again as a group. 

**Jamie:** _dani!!_

It’s rare for Jamie to use exclamation points. She must be genuinely flustered. 

**Dani:** _That’s not a picture!_ _  
_ **Dani:** _(I’m just kidding haha you obviously don’t have to send me anything if you don’t want to. Literally no pressure)_

**Jamie:** _would you believe me if i told you i’ve never sent a nude before_

**Dani:** _Wait really??_ _  
_ **Dani:** _Why do I assume your phone is just constantly inundated with sexts_

**Jamie:** _couldn’t tell you_ _  
_ **Jamie:** _at the moment you’re the only one “sexting” me_ _  
_ **Jamie:** _if that’s what this is supposed to be_

**Dani:** _“At the moment”._

**Jamie:** _yes i’ve shooed away all my other suitors_

Jamie is joking, obviously, and the conversation keeps a smile on Dani’s face as she watches Jamie’s text bubbles pop up on her screen, but...she does wonder, sometimes. If Jamie’s still sleeping with anyone else, or open to it. Or actively looking. Dani’s starting to think that if they keep doing this without talking about it, someone’s going to get hurt, and that someone will probably be herself. 

**Dani:** _Just for me?!_

Silence for a few more minutes, then — 

**Jamie:** _of course_ _  
_ **Jamie:** _fine. another thing i’ve just subjected myself to just for you:_

— followed by a picture that Dani only gets a fleeting glimpse of before she has to click her phone shut, once she realizes what it is. She spends the rest of the meeting very distracted. After they finally finish up she retreats to her empty classroom and unlocks her phone to look at the picture in greater detail: Jamie from her mouth down, posing in front of a full-length mirror in just her bra and work pants (and, of course, that chain Dani loves), all farmer’s tan and wiry muscle. 

**Dani:** _Good Lord_

The message looks kind of sparse. She adds an emoji, the one that’s red and has a little drop of sweat falling down it. 

**Jamie:** _is that a compliment_

**Dani:** _Yes!!!!! You’re so hot! Wtf_

**Jamie:** _lol won’t argue with you on that one_

Well, now she isn’t going to be able to focus for the rest of the day. Or for the rest of her life, probably. The afterimage of Jamie’s abs is going to burn at the back of her mind forever, like when you close your eyes after looking at the sun for too long. 

**Dani:** _Come over tonight_ _  
_ **Dani:** _I want you_

She’s learned that if she tries to play it coy, Jamie will tease her mercilessly until she gets to the point of what she actually wants. So recently she’s started trying to be more assertive about it, more unabashed with her desire. Jamie seems to like it. It definitely works as far as getting Dani what she wants. 

**Jamie:** _look you can’t just text me shit like that at nine in the morning_

**Dani:** _Why not?_

**Jamie:** _bc now i’m distracted_

**Dani:** _Well that makes two of us then_

**Jamie:** _hahaaa dani_ _  
_ **Jamie:** _ok i’ll come over_ _  
_ **Jamie:** _i get off after six today_

Dani’s in the middle of typing out something like _So do I_ when Jamie says: 

**Jamie:** _i know you’re about to send the obvious joke in response to that_ _  
_ **Jamie:** _please don’t_

She laughs out loud, stupidly, even though she’s by herself and Jamie can’t hear her. 

**Dani:** _Okay but only because you asked so politely._

She could push some more of their rules tonight. She could make it about _Jamie_ rather than have it be about herself the way it normally is. She _could,_ she wants to, but — it feels like a whole new plane of want, something detached from her need for a purely physical release. Does that mean anything? Is this just part and parcel of her new life as a sexual being, or is it...something she needs to be worried about?

By the time Jamie comes over after work that night, Dani has so thoroughly psyched herself out about the whole thing that she all but drags her into her apartment. She kicks the door closed behind Jamie, using her hips to press her back against the door, and takes one long, savoring look at her face before kissing her hard. 

She thinks Jamie is probably trying to say something, but Dani’s mouth is in the way, so it comes out as, “Mmmm.” Finally Jamie takes both her hands, tangling their fingers together, and pulls away. 

“You alright?” Jamie says. 

Of course she’s alright. “Yeah. Why?” 

Jamie shrugs. “You seem...I dunno. Bit different tonight.” 

“I’m fine,” she says, although actually her nerves feel all jangly, like metal clinking together inside her body. “I just — really need you.”

Something in Jamie’s face changes, softens. “Okay,” she says, letting Dani lead her back to her room, almost a ritual for them now. Jamie topples her backward onto her bed, and they make out like it’s the only thing Jamie came here to do, meandering, aimless. Dani runs her hands over Jamie’s thighs; the sharp edges of her hip bones; her stomach, which makes her laugh; her chest over her shirt, which makes her gasp. She draws her palms up Jamie’s arms, feels the muscles there flexing from her having to hold herself up above Dani, trails her fingertips down Jamie’s wrist. 

“What are you doing?” Jamie says. 

“Appreciating you,” Dani says. 

Jamie makes a surprised face. “What? Why?” she says, through a smile that looks a little too hesitant spreading across her face. 

“I really like your body.” She presses a palm to Jamie’s sternum to keep her from kissing her again. Not that Dani doesn’t want Jamie to kiss her, of course, but she really doesn’t get enough of a chance to simply _look_ at Jamie. When she smiles like this, she looks so young. Normally, Jamie is — well, Dani knows her story. Jamie has to carry a _lot,_ and she does it with such grace, makes it look effortless, but — Dani wants to be someone who can offer her the ability to put all of that down for a while. Someone who can be safe for Jamie to do that. 

“All this because of one picture?” Jamie says. “A mediocre one, at that.”

“No,” Dani says. “I mean... _loved_ the picture, don’t get me wrong, but...no, I just wanna look at you.” She raises her eyebrows. “Is that so wrong?” 

Jamie laughs. “By all means, go ahead.” She rolls off of Dani and onto her side, propped up on one elbow. “Look to your heart’s content,” she says, gesturing at herself. 

“Oh, believe me, I am.” 

When she’s finally had her fill of gazing at Jamie, Dani leans in and kisses her again, deep and decadent. She puts her hand on Jamie’s face and rubs her thumb along her jaw. Jamie’s features are so delicate, but somehow they still come together to form a person who looks strong and sturdy. Dani toys with the hem of Jamie’s t-shirt and waits for any sign of hesitation. When Jamie gives none, Dani slides her hand up, past the flat, lean plane of Jamie’s stomach, up to her breasts, which are bare — Dani had noticed earlier that she wasn’t wearing a bra, actually, and had looked a little too long and earned a chiding _my eyes are up here_ from Jamie — and listens for Jamie’s sharp exhale when Dani brushes against a nipple. 

She wants _so_ many things. She wants to make Jamie feel the way she always makes Dani feel — she wants to feel her wet and open around her fingers — she wants to put her mouth all over Jamie and watch Jamie’s face when she comes and she wants everything, all of it, all of Jamie. 

“Take this off?” Dani says, tugging at Jamie’s shirt. Jamie obeys immediately, pulls it off and drops it on the other side of the bed, and for a moment, Dani just looks at her, trying to understand how one person can make her feel so many things all at once, how she can simultaneously entertain the desire to fuck Jamie senseless and also want to take Jamie in her arms, keep her there, her soft perfect body and her soft perfect smile. Finally Dani says, “Um.” 

“What is it?” 

She doesn’t mean to say it, but it escapes her all the same: “I wanna touch you.” 

“Okay,” Jamie says. “You mean like —” 

“And I want to” — well, now that she’s actually saying this it feels like she’s reciting bad porn dialogue, but she’s already started so she might as well get it all out — “watch you. Touch yourself. I know we — I know I asked already, didn’t I? A while ago?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Okay, well,” Dani says, coming closer and, with one hand on Jamie’s shoulder, nudging her onto her back, “I want it now. I want to see you — fucking yourself, for me.” 

“Jesus, Dani,” Jamie says, but she sounds a little breathless too, so Dani must not sound as dumb as she thinks she does. 

“You want that?” 

She kisses Jamie’s neck. The skin there is hot and flushed. Then she kisses down to Jamie’s collarbone, sucks at the skin there, gently at first and then, experimentally, harder. Jamie makes a low rough sound, so Dani sucks hard enough to leave a mark, uses her teeth a little, and Jamie says her name again in that low, untethered way. Dani files this away for reference, the fact that Jamie likes biting, or maybe just a little roughness from her in general. She wants to catalogue all these reactions, wants to learn all the things Jamie likes.

Jamie regards her darkly for a moment, allowing her gaze to trace the contours of Dani’s mouth. Having Jamie’s eyes on her always makes her feel like she’s on fire. “Come here,” Jamie says, and Dani lets her pull her in to kiss her breathless again until Dani hears her the zipper of her shorts being undone.

“Let me,” Dani says. Jamie lets her hand fall away, and Dani flicks open the top button, pulls the shorts down far enough for Jamie to kick them off. Now Jamie’s wearing nothing but her underwear and she looks so _good_ like this, laid out just for Dani, looking up at her with her face lit gently by the glow of Dani’s bedside lamp. Dani traces her chain with one finger, following the way it drapes and dips across the hollows in her shoulders. When finally she decides she’s been gawking at Jamie for too long, she leans in again, but Jamie pulls back. 

“You’re gonna watch,” Jamie says, “aren’t you?” 

“Oh. Y — yeah.” 

So she leans back on her own pillows and watches Jamie dip one hand into her underwear. She waits for Jamie to pull it off, but she doesn’t, which is maddening, seeing the shape of Jamie’s knuckles through the fabric as she circles and presses in, draws her bottom lip between her teeth, hisses when she hits the right spot. It could be enough just looking at Jamie’s face while she does this. Jamie’s only just gotten started, which means she still has that stupid hot smile on her face, still has her eyes perfectly half-lidded, the shadow of her hand moving lazily in her underwear. And it’s hot, she looks _hot,_ but what Dani really wants to see is the way she looks when she’s close, when she’s desperate. 

“You like seeing me do this?” Jamie says. Dani nods helplessly. She doesn’t trust herself to talk. She’s so turned on it hurts, which — before Jamie she thought that was just something people said, an exaggeration, but the need to be touched really does ache in a weird way. “You know I’m thinking about you, right?” 

Dani stammers, “N — no?”, although she’s right here in front of Jamie’s face so really she doesn’t know what else Jamie could possibly be thinking about. 

“Thinking about if you were doing this to me,” Jamie says, and Dani wonders if it’s possible for women to come without being touched at all, because she really thinks she could, although Jamie would tease her about it forever so she’s definitely _not_ going to entertain that thought anymore. “Thinking about — fuck —” Her jaw goes slack and she lets her eyes drift shut. “Thinking about feeling you in me.” 

“Let me,” Dani says, “let me touch you.”

Jamie laughs, rushed and breathy. “Not yet.” She pulls her underwear down so that Dani can see, and then she looks straight at Dani and slides one finger inside herself. “Don’t think you — want it bad enough yet.” 

“I do, I want it bad.” 

The room is so quiet that Dani can hear only Jamie’s stuttering breaths and the slick sound of Jamie fucking herself, and it’s _obscene,_ it shouldn’t be as hot as it is, but it’s all Dani can think about. It feels voyeuristic and dirty and it’s sending her out of her _mind._

“Look at you,” Jamie says. “You’re so —” 

“Jamie, oh my _God,_ please let me —” 

“Okay,” Jamie says, fisting one hand in Dani’s shirt to pull her in and kiss her messily, and then finally Dani reaches her hand down, a little too eagerly, bumping Jamie’s own hand in the process. 

“God,” she says. Jamie is hot and swollen under her fingers, and she makes the prettiest sound into Dani’s mouth when she circles her clit with what she hopes is the right amount of pressure, the right rhythm. Dani dips her fingers lower, just to feel — “You’re so —” 

“See what you do to me?” Jamie says. 

“I think that’s less because of me and more because of what you were just doing.” 

Jamie lets out a rushed exhale that could have been a laugh if Dani hadn’t, at that exact moment, bent lower to put her mouth on Jamie’s nipple. “Definitely all you.” 

Dani lets her fingers hover at Jamie’s entrance for what feels like an awkward amount of time — she wants to, she _really_ wants to, but it weirdly feels like a barrier that means something, even though Jamie’s done the same thing to her countless times now — until Jamie pants, “Go ahead. Uh — two.” 

“Two?” 

“Yeah,” Jamie says, “please.” 

“So polite,” Dani mumbles, somehow still capable of speech, and then she sinks two fingers into Jamie, and says, “Holy fuck,” at the same as Jamie groaning her name; even though there’s nothing being done _to_ her it still feels good in some mysterious phantom part of her, because Jamie is so wet and tight around her fingers and when Dani starts moving, pulling slowly out of her and then pushing back in, Jamie clutches at the back of her neck with one hand and moans with complete and total lack of restraint. 

She takes it slow for a bit, dragging those sounds out of Jamie. Tries to do it the way Jamie does, watching her face for every sign of something she’s done right. After that initial second it gets a lot less nerve wracking than Dani had expected it to be; it’s natural, easy. Then Jamie looks at her and says, “Sit up,” and Dani does what she tells her, with Jamie following her up. Jamie settles both of legs on either side of Dani’s hips, takes the hand that was just inside her and unfurls two of Dani’s fingers, and lowers herself down onto them. 

“Jesus Christ,” Dani says, because Jamie keeps moving, up and down on her fingers with both her arms resting on Dani’s shoulders, Jamie is basically fucking herself on Dani’s fingers, and as she does it she’s soaking the rest of Dani’s hand, the part of her palm that’s laying open on her lap to meet Jamie’s hips every time she sinks down, and — 

“Dani,” Jamie gasps, “Fuck, fuck, God, you’re so —” 

“I’m so what?” 

“— good, you’re so good, you feel so good —”

“Yeah?” she says, and there’s some part of her body that lights up entirely when Jamie calls her _good_ like that, she doesn’t understand it and she barely even knows what she’s even trying to say anymore but she manages, “I wanna be good for you.” She tangles her free hand into Jamie’s hair and uses it to pull her head gently back to expose her neck, earning another moan from Jamie — hair-pulling works too, she makes a note of that — and then she kisses her throat. 

“You are,” Jamie says, slurring her words a little.

It’s a whole new kind of hot watching Jamie lose control like this. Dani’s seen her come before, plenty of times by now, but it’s different when she’s responsible for it herself. It feels like a new dimension of trust that Jamie is putting in her, by letting Dani see her like this, letting her bring her to this point. It’s probably not that deep to Jamie, who has done this with women before Dani and will do it with women after Dani, but still, it feels meaningful.

Jamie’s sort of losing her balance, her rhythm starting to falter, so Dani takes her hand out of her hair and wraps her arm tight around her waist to help keep her steady, pulling back to look at Jamie’s face as she rides her. She looks wrecked, her hair falling out of its already-messy bun, a couple sloppy hickeys scattered around her neck courtesy of Dani, eyebrows pulling together. Her eyes are closed. 

When finally she stops the movements of her hips, letting Dani’s fingers push into her up to the last knuckle and grinding desperately into the heel of her hand, Dani says, “Open your eyes. Look at me, I want to see you, I wanna — I want you to look at me when you come.” 

Jamie does. She puts one hand on her cheek, says, “Dani, _Dani,”_ in a strangled voice, rides out her orgasm with Dani’s fingers still buried deep, rolling her hips aimlessly with it, shuddering into Dani’s body as it hits her. 

They stay like that for a little longer, breathing hard. Jamie lets her forehead tip and rest against Dani’s. 

“I love hearing you say my name like that,” Dani says. She still needs — _something,_ herself, could probably come within a few minutes if Jamie would just touch her, but first she wants to savor this moment. “I loved — that. Seeing you like that.” 

“Mm,” Jamie says. “Don’t think I need to tell you how I felt about it, do I?”

“I think I can figure it out. But...you know, maybe you should tell me anyway. Just so we’re on the same page.” 

Jamie rolls her eyes and kisses her. She lifts up and off of Dani’s fingers, which Dani hadn’t even realized were still inside her, actually. 

Something occurs to her. “Open your mouth,” she says, hoping it sounds commanding and not weird. Jamie does it unquestioningly, so it must. 

Dani raises her fingers, still wet and sticky, and lets them hover around Jamie’s lips; when she doesn’t see any signs of hesitation, she fumbles them into Jamie’s mouth, first just the tip and then more, Jamie dipping her head to take them all the way down, and Dani can feel her tongue against her skin, licking them clean. When Jamie’s done she lets Dani’s fingers slip out and then she kisses her with her mouth open, so that Dani’s tasting not only her tongue and her lips but also _her,_ the clean tang of her, and it’s — it’s filthy, it should feel too dirty, but somehow nothing is off-limits with Jamie, even things that she would have shied away from in a heartbeat with Eddie or, she realizes, with literally anyone else, even a different woman. It makes her want more of it. Not tonight — as absurd as it is, she thinks she still needs to work herself up to it mentally — but someday soon, she thinks, she’d like to have Jamie that way too.

“Not gonna lie,” Jamie says, “I like it when you tell me what to do.” 

“Oh yeah?” 

“Yeah. Really like it, actually.” 

“Well, next time I’m gonna use that to my advantage,” she says, and Jamie looks darkly intrigued before Dani continues, “I’ll ask you to...do my dishes for me. No — sorry, I’ll _tell_ you to. Order you around, do my chores, et cetera.”

“Fuck, you got me genuinely excited there for a minute.” 

She lowers her voice to an exaggeratedly seductive register and says, biting back a smile, “Vacuum my apartment for me, Jamie.” 

“Stop.” 

“Re-grout my shower for me, Jamie,” she says; because Jamie is laughing and slapping at her shoulder, she throws in a horribly over-the-top fake moan. 

“No! _No,_ stop it, stop.” 

“Change — change the oil in my car for me, you’re so _good_ at it —”

“Please _stop,_ why is this actually turning me on a little bit?”

“Wait, _what?_ Is it?!” Dani laughs, and Jamie closes her eyes and groans, although she’s still laughing too. 

“S’not my fault! Dunno what you expect when you’re fucking _moaning_ at me like that.”

“Sorry!” 

After a moment of thought, Jamie frowns and says, “D’you actually need your oil changed, though? ‘Cause I can help you out with that, if you were being serious.” 

“Mmm, I don’t think so? I honestly don’t even know how to tell,” Dani says. “Isn’t something supposed to start, like, beeping at me?” 

“Beeping — no, it’s going to beep at you.”

“Oh.” She frowns. “Then I have no idea. Maybe you should check.” 

Jamie sighs. “I’ll get to it this week.” 

It’s started raining outside. Dani can hear the heavy tapping against her windows. “Do you wanna spend the night?” she says. 

Jamie feels so fragile and small in her arms. Maybe tonight they’ll fall asleep together in her bed; maybe Jamie will let Dani hold her. “Oh, shit, sorry,” Jamie says, which doesn’t make sense to Dani until she continues, “You’re still — d’you want me to —” Then she stops herself. It’s odd to see Jamie so hesitant with her words. Normally that’s Dani’s job. 

“Do I want you to what?” 

“I was about to say, like, do you want me to fuck you —” She laughs, swipes her hand across her face. “— but that seems like the wrong word for it now.” 

Dani gives a thoughtful hum. “It does, doesn’t it?” Then she pauses. “Wait. Did you think that was why I asked you to stay over?” 

“Uh — yeah. Was it not?” 

“No!” Dani says. It comes out sounding indignant, and Jamie laughs. “I mean, if you want to, I won’t say _no_ , but — no, I just like hanging out with you! Plus the weather’s so gross.” 

There’s a funny look in Jamie’s eyes as she looks down at Dani. She’s smiling faintly but her eyebrows are pulled together as if in a frown. “You sure?” 

“Yeah,” she says, “of course I’m sure.” 

She can still feel herself open and wanting, Jamie’s weight shifting deliciously against the crease of her jeans, but for once she doesn’t crave the release the way she has the last few times. Instead she wants to wait long enough to savor it, long enough to just have Jamie against her body like this, asking nothing of her. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm on tumblr at [glutaminase.](https://glutaminase.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Edit: This was originally supposed to be a oneshot, but I changed my mind and will be expanding it lol


End file.
